Consumers have an abundance of choices to make in social venues, whether bars, restaurants, clubs, coffee shops or other public locations where food, beverages or entertainment are provided. Many such venues vary in popularity, whether as to time of day, day of the week or season or as to normal fluctuation due to novelty. For example, a particular bar might have a small lunchtime crowd but a large evening crowd, or even late evening crowd. Alternatively, a particular restaurant in proximity to a sports venue may be very busy on game night but very slow at other times. The level of activity, except at certain times (i.e. middle of the night at a restaurant) is typically very difficult to predict.
The level of activity can greatly impact consumer desire to go to a particular venue. One type of consumer, a family with small children for example, may only want to go to restaurants that are quiet or slow enough to have immediate seating. Conversely, younger people or conventioneers may purposely want to go to venues that are loud and standing room only. In another example, music clubs may only become busy when an opening act comes on stage and this time can vary widely based on the band and number of opening acts.
Consumers have little way of knowing a real-time level of crowd activity at a venue unless they (a) travel to the venue or (b) call the venue. The first can be greatly impractical depending on the location of the venue or the desire of the consumer to guarantee in advance what the level of crowd activity is. It is a common occurrence for consumers to travel to a venue and find that a restaurant is too busy to accommodate seating except with a long wait time. Or consumers may travel to a venue and find that it is closed, or so slow that it would not be enjoyable to stay at the location. Other venue choices may not be in proximity to the first location, thus imposing further risk of lost time or frustration on the consumer.
Consumers could call particular venues and check on crowd level. However, many venues will not answer the phone or if they do, the information they provide is temporal—by the time consumers arrive at the destination, conditions have changed for the worse. While some restaurants do take reservations, which addresses concern for seating, many do not. Further, crowd level might affect whether someone goes to a particular venue even with a reservation (for example, a working lunch where it might be essential to have access to a quiet space).
For these and other reasons, consumers are often left with substantial risk of lost time and frustration when choosing an appropriate social venue because of the lack of real-time crowd activity information.
From the business standpoint there is frustration as well. Unless a consumer calls or tries to book a reservation, whether by phone or Internet, the consumer will not know in advance whether the venue is appropriate for the social gathering. So the business often has to address frustrated consumers who arrive expecting seating when there is a long wait or arrive expecting bustling activity when the venue is too quiet. Businesses have no way of broadcasting crowd activity level to let consumers have the benefit of this information.
Further, businesses that are slow when they are typically busy might like to communicate such information to consumers in need of immediate seating. Or businesses that are busy when they are typically slow might want to advertise activity level as a way of showing business success. Businesses may also want to be able to offer specials or deals that relate to specified activity levels.
While register sales may provide some measure of facility use, dollars spent by patrons could vary wildly from the actual number of patrons in the facility. Traditional door counters, primarily used for security or fire code compliance, provide no information about the level of crowd activity in the venue. 100 people in motion at a rock club will be much louder than 500 people sitting at a play.
Thus there is a need for a real-time crowd activity measurement and reporting system for social venues.
In addition to overall crowd effect, ambient conditions also affect the condition of a restaurant or other social venue, including the quality of overall experience. Monitoring and capturing of sound, light and temperature provide an overall ambient experience description that would be useful to venues: for patron enjoyment; for staff enjoyment and productivity; and for general conditions of the premises, including security and safety. So, sound level monitoring could provide data needed for the crowd activity measurement. However, temperature, in combination with sound level, could also provide crowd activity measurement. Noise, light and temperature also affect venue user experience, including for those with hearing or vision impairment, noise sensitivity or crowd-related anxiety. These are but additional reasons why an ambient condition monitor would be of great value.